Czech Christmas Market

The day after Halloween, the Embassy of the Czech Republic held a special Christmas Market. It felt a bit early to start thinking about Christmas, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to eat goulash and watch a traditional marionette theatre performance.



Evan loved the marionettes and Bennet mostly loved eating the "trdelnik", a Czech pastry that is made from rolled dough that is wrapped around a metal tube then baked and topped with cinnamon sugar and nuts.

Trdelnik, YUMMY!

  I couldn't resist the beautiful hand blown Czech glass ornaments and I can't wait to see them sparkle on my Christmas tree next month.

Candy, Candy, Candy

Happy Halloween! We had a great Halloween this year. While Aunt Emily was staying with us, she helped carve pumpkins. Evan was so excited to carve pumpkins with her. He has loved having Aunt Emily here in Virginia. Emily and Evan carved a funny face with big teeth and hair on the big pumpkin, daddy put a spooky face on his, and mommy put a silly face on Bennet's

Bennet didn't carve his pumpkin, but he had fun watching all the pumpkin carnage from his little red car.


During Halloween week, we had lots of fun going to halloween parties. Evan and Bennet collected their body weight in candy.

Mommy made both costumes this year and they turned out really cute.










Evan was Super Why, a super reader hero from his favorite show. Evan has learned to read this year and we are so proud of him, so it wasn't hard to dress him up as a super reader.




Bennet was a Cute-a-saurus rex. I made him a tail and added spikes to a matching hoodie. It was adorable to watch him waddle that tail around carrying his candy bucket.

In addition to the ward trunk-n-treat, Evan had a Halloween party at his preschool and on Halloween day we took the train into DC to go trick-or-treating at Daddy's law firm, WSGR.







The kids had so much fun and got so much candy that, when it was time to go trick or treating later that night, Evan didn't want to go out. He thought it would be more fun to stay home watching halloween movies, binging on the candy he had already collected, and handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters that came to our house.

Pumpkins and Hayrides

Last week the boys and I headed up to Butler's Orchard to their Harvest Festival.
We had a lot of fun picking out the perfect pumpkin. There were LOTS of pumpkins so, it took a while, but Evan was able to find "The best pumpkin ever!"

We had a fun hayride to and from the pumpkin patch and, after dropping our pumpkins back at the car, we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying all the other fun things they had at the harvest festival.

Bennet enjoyed playing in the sandbox filled with corn.



Evan loved the wooden castle and pirateship at the playground.

We also had fun finding our way through the corn maze

and going down the BIG slides on a burlap sack. We could have stayed all day, but we eventually needed to get home for naps.

Hershey Park

Unfortunately, when we got there, Evan wasn't feeling well and threw up all over himself, twice. So we turned around and made the two hour drive back to Virginia without riding any rides.

Before the season ended our wonderful friends, the Inouye's, invited us to go to Hershey Park with them. They had some free tickets for us and we were so excited to spend the day riding rides and eating chocolate.

The tickets were good for two more weeks and our nice friends gave us an extra ticket so, when Aunt Emily moved to Virginia, we could take her with us. This time everyone was feeling well and we had a great time exploring Hershey's huge amusement park.

 Evan did end up throwing up on himself again at lunch but this time it was because Mommy took him on a roller coaster that was probably too big for him.

We stayed all day and rode as many rides as we could before heading back home.

Fun with the Saunders

For phase two of our vacation, we headed up to Riverton for some fun with our Saunders cousins and Grandma Heather and Grandpa Jon.

 Evan, Jonny and Tommy were thick as thieves. Aunt Scooby and I often had to send them outside to run through the sprinklers and jump on the tramp because they were just too wild to be inside.
Bennet spent his time opening and shutting all the doors, including Grandma's fridge, and emptying all its contents. We had to tie it shut with a grocery bag until Grandpa invented a neat strap and buckle to keep it shut.

 Grandma had fun giving the boys preschool lessons when she had time. Evan loved practicing his writing on the dry erase boards Grandma had for them.

Because we were going to be at Grandma Heather's house for long enough, we signed Evan up for Swimming lessons at the nearby pool. It is the same pool Mommy used to go swimming in when was little and worked as a lifeguard when she was older. Evan had so much fun and his confidence in the water was much improved by the end of the week.

Grandma took us all to This is The Place Monument Park for some pioneer fun. We rode on two trains, panned for gold, explored a pirate ship, had a pony ride and saw some Professional native American dancers preform. Jonny and Tommy could have ridden the train around the pond all day. Evan was so excited to find some "gold" in the river. Bennet liked petting the sheep, though I don't think the sheep was overly fond of the experience.

On another day, Grandpa and Grandpa took us all to play mini golf or "golf balling" as the boys kept calling it. We had oodles of fun. Grandpa tried to teach the boys how to hit the ball properly, but they didn't quite get it. It didn't matter though, there were smiles all around as the boys tried getting their balls in the hole. It was sad when they learned that the didn't get their ball back on the last hole.

Grandpa and they boys had been working on building a model rocket all week, just like Mommy used to build with Grandpa when she was a little girl. On the last night, it was ready for blast off. We found a nice big field and the boys all took turns blasting it off. It was a excellent way to end a wonderful vacation.

Alec and Tania get Married!

We love to visit family and this summer a special occasion brought us to Utah.  Alec and Tania were married in the Mount Timpanogos Temple on the morning of July 11th.

It was a wonderful ceremony that reminded Paul and I of our wedding 9 years earlier, especially because we were also married at the Mount Timpanogos Temple.

Uncle Alec was so happy and excited to be marrying Tania, he couldn't stop smiling.  It was a little bit more of a challenge to get the nephews to smile for the pictures.

Daddy was initially skeptical of the color, but Evan and Bennet and their cousins all looked very debonair in the ties that Mommy made for them.

waiting for the REAL cake to be cut

Though they looked so handsome, the boys got tired of having to spend the whole day in their nice clothes. After one time too many of having mommy re-tuck his shirt, Evan looked up and pleaded, "No more hands in pants!"

Aunt Emily made a beautiful wedding cake. Evan was so excited to get a piece, he flat out rejected the ice cream cake that they were serving and spent the whole reception guarding the big cake to make sure no one touched it. He was very happy when he was finally served a piece.

Bennet, on the other hand, would not stay in one spot and spent the whole evening trying to weave through the legs of every guest in attendance.  He even managed to shake off his parents once or twice.

Fun with the Kraczeks

In addition to the 4th of July, we celebrated Grandma Kraczek's 70th birthday. Mommy made a Schwartzwalder Kuchen or Black Forest cake that Grandma had requested. It was the very first birthday cake I made for Daddy after we were married and it has become a bit of a Kraczek family favorite.


We went out for a nice dinner with just the adults, made possible because Abby agreed to watch all of the little kids. We followed the dinner by singing to Grandma and enjoying a yummy piece of cake. We love our Grandma Kraczek and hope she has a great year.

On our last day with Grandma and Grandpa Kraczek, we determined that walking around the Hogle zoo in 95 degree heat for four hours would be a good way to test their stamina.  We like to use our National Zoo pass to go to The Hogle Zoo because it has different animals, as the DC zoo has more Asian animals and Hogle has more African animals. We took our cousins Sam and Kaitlyn because everything is more fun with cousins.

 

We were very tired when we had walked around the whole park but we had a lot of fun. Bennet got a cute new hat to keep the sun out of his eyes and Daddy got to see giraffes for the first time.

We miss our family and having cousins to play with when we have to go back home to Virginia, but, by the end, we are ready to go back to our house, even the kids.